Titch

Kate Marshall Flaherty

In Titch, Kate Marshall Flaherty reaches the high point so far in her unique poetic career of travelling deeper into the world and into eternity through each grain of sand she encounters. In agile verse that truly is a “walking to arrive at rhythm’s beginning”, she meets with many a salmon, canoe, promise, rock, axe, erotic conversation, disabling seizure, blueberry, birdhouse, snowy day, soft-boiled egg, and session of ecstatic star-gazing. Her verse loves the small that is great. In this book, she turns especially to the titch, the little that remains: “I sniff the rot and sweet / of May’s decay and promise”. The poet of Titch is one of those who can truly look on things—even scarred things—and say, with enchantment, “Your beauty is worthy / of love-making”.

— A. F. Moritz

Kate Marshall Flaherty’s poems —many of them inspired by a reverence for nature — are charged with imaginative gusto. The reader comes upon lines like these and marvels:

In-between time,

when purple-pink primulas

hermit themselves, genuflect

beneath snow-tamped earth.

Poems such as the emotionally charged “Axe,” and “Cap” — a moving tribute to the poet’s father — make this a notable collection.

— Kenneth Sherman

The poems in Kate Marshall Flaherty’s sixth collection, Titch, abide between sacred light and enduring beauty—scarred, whole and restored. These are poems that face the world—its natural wonders and human challenges, with strength and reverence; that openly welcome a reader in, and never forget to breathe. The title of the collection, an informal British word meaning ‘small’—and printed in large uppercase letters on the cover—captures the wide wrap of Flaherty’s poetic embrace. Fifty-nine conscientiously composed poems, including links to seven video versions…

— Elana Wolff

To read Elana Wolff’s entire review, please visit Kate Marshall Flaherty’s website:

$25.00 if purchased in Canada (includes shipping and taxes)

$35.00 if purchased outside Canada (includes shipping and taxes)